


Something Like Hope

by MissSunFlower94



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale is the Emotionally Aware one in this, Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), First Kiss, Hitting all those Ship Trope boxes lol, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 06:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19865143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSunFlower94/pseuds/MissSunFlower94
Summary: “Crowley,” he says. And he says it the way he’s been saying dear and oh, he’s always said his name the way he’s been saying dear and oh. Oh.~Surprising no one more than himself, Crowley is actually the oblivious one. How the turn tables.





	Something Like Hope

**Author's Note:**

> this is like, stream of consciousness fluff. none plot with left softness. enjoy.

The devil’s in the details, or so the saying goes. Well, the saying actually began as _God is in the details_ but it shifted to the devil overtime, which probably said something about human nature if you thought long enough about it. The sayings mean different, although not inverse, things; the latter that whatever one does should be done to perfection, the former that the smallest detail, done wrong, will reveal the flaws in any act.

The two put together make the same point. If you don’t want to get caught, you’d better account for everything. And, as it happens, Crowley and Aziraphale are trying to keep the God _and_ the devil out of their lives. 

So – although Crowley would like nothing more than to sleep for the next decade-to-century (preferably with Aziraphale) – the two of them are up all night making sure their masquerade is going to be as foolproof as possible. They have to if they want there to _be_ a next decade-to-century-to… rest of time, really.

At least he’s still _with Aziraphale_. He’ll take what little victories he can.

“I don’t expect they’ll have time to look for us until morning,” Aziraphale hazards. He’d deemed the chair in Crowley’s room too uncomfortable and waved off any suggestion of demonic or angelic miracling of a new one. Instead, he’d settled on the floor, his back against one of the plants. Crowley settles in the vacant chair. Having spent enough time in the bookshop, he does agree it’s not as comfortable as the backroom couch that he’d all but claimed as his own. He’s going to miss that.

“Shouldn’t matter how early in the morning. Heaven already implied that we… well, it won’t appear out of character if I – if you-as-me, that is – leave from here in the morning.” He absently plays with a string of ivy that is resting over his shoulder, having gravitated towards the angel the way all things seem to. “They’ll likely be watching for when I – _you_ , rather – will leave and strike then.”

“No,” Crowley says grimly. He’d been thinking about that. “They’ll want it to be when we’re together. This is going to be example to the both of us.”

Aziraphale considers this and then slowly nods. Recent events have sobered him and Crowley truly wishes his angel had been right about Heaven – that they did have humanity’s best interests at heart – if only to put the light back in Aziraphale’s eyes.

“All the same, my dear,” Aziraphale continues briskly. “If we’re attached at the hip until the moment they come for us, they might suspect that _we’ve_ suspected. We’ve got to appear…”

“Unsuspecting?” Crowley suggests. Aziraphale makes a face at him (it’s adorable). Still, his point is well made. “So we run some errands as each other and meet up again, mid-morning?”

Aziraphale nods again. “I know I’d want to check on what’s- ah- left of my bookshop.”

He falls silent and looks so downcast that Crowley speaks before thinking. “You know... it might be fine.”

He blinks. “What will?”

“The bookshop. I mean, Adam rebooting reality and all that.” He waves a hand. “Might be fine.”

Aziraphale is silent again and it’s a rare time when his emotions aren’t writ clear on his face. Well, increasingly less rare, actually, which Crowley isn’t particularly pleased by.

But then he smiles, and it’s a real Aziraphale smile – the kind that lights up his whole face in a way that Crowley thinks Heaven itself would pale in comparison to – and he feels like the world brightens a little with it. 

“You’re just thinking about your Bentley, aren’t you, dear?”

He hadn’t been, and he knows that Aziraphale is only bringing it up to deflect (he recognizes the tactic; they’re both habitual deflectors), but even so he can’t deny the rush of something? Hope? He's not used to hope. Aziraphale’s smile takes on a smug edge and Crowley grasps for a way to turn the tables back again.

“What’s got you calling me _dear_ now?”

Aziraphale blushes, just a little though – not nearly as flustered as Crowley had hoped. “Caught that, have you?”

“Hard to miss.” He says without thinking. Oh, now it just sounds like Crowley pays far too much attention to what Aziraphale calls him. He does, of course, but that doesn’t mean Aziraphale should know it.

He’s thinking that he managed to fluster himself, like an idiot, when Aziraphale speaks again:

“Well, I would suppose it’s because you’re very dear to me.”

He just _says_ that. He just says _that_ , with not the words as much as the delivery leaving Crowley almost certain he has misheard him. Without a trace of irony, like he’s commenting on why you would call the sky blue. Not even because it’s obvious, because there’s _nothing else it could be_.

“Sorry?” He says, his voice several octaves higher and strained like an out of tune guitar string.

Aziraphale doesn’t repeat himself. “Come now. It’s not any different than you calling me angel, is it?”

Metaphysical beings don’t need physical hearts, and that Crowley – and Aziraphale – have given them to their human guises was more an afterthought than anything. One Crowley wishes he hadn’t had currently, as it pounds so hard that he can hear it drumming in his ears.

“You are an angel,” he manages.

“I am.” Aziraphale is now so damned smug it’s unbelievable. How the turn tables. “But that’s not what you mean.”

“And how would you know what I-” Crowley begins hotly before he cuts himself off, realizing not that Aziraphale is right (he knows that), but that Aziraphale knows he’s right. Aziraphale _knows_. Aziraphale _has known_.

Aziraphale’s grin fades, no doesn’t fade – softens. It doesn’t make it any easier for Crowley to think. “Crowley,” he says. And he says it the way he’s been saying dear and oh, he’s _always_ said his name the way he’s been saying dear and oh. _Oh_. 

There had been times, passing moments, flashes, where Crowley had guessed, perhaps even hoped, been so close to certain that Aziraphale felt the same but that’s always where it remained. Close. Never sure. Never spoken. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale repeats. “You’ve known, haven’t you?”

“How I feel?” Crowley asks, a bit wildly. He’s aware he’s admitting more than he ever has in words but so is Aziraphale and hell (or heaven), he’s imagined this happening so many different ways and this is exactly none of them. 

"No. Yes. How we both feel.”

“I-ye-yeah, well, I knew half of that.”

Aziraphale sits back, something between utter shock and wonder on his face. Awe. “You didn’t know? This entire time you haven’t known that I love you?”

Once again, Aziraphale just _says_ this, that _word_ , like it’s the answer to the daily crossword and not an armor-shattering revelation. Crowley feels it like a kick in the chest, and he’s suddenly standing from momentum he didn’t feel building. There’s an elation there, somewhere, but he’s ignoring that right now. “Yeah and how- how exactly was I supposed to have known? You won’t even call us friends.”

 _“Wouldn’t_ ,” Aziraphale amends, pushing himself to his feet as well. “And I couldn’t. It would have gotten us both killed – we’ve talked about this.”

 _Never agreed about it_ , Crowley thinks, but doesn’t say because what Aziraphale said is true enough. Whether they’d agreed to call it love or friendship or fraternization, it had still been a capital offense in the eyes of those in charge. 

"If that’s the case then why _didn’t_ you just tell me that it was-” His voice cuts out. He still can’t say it. Still can’t quite believe it, honestly, and is refusing to put the name to it until he knows it’s safe. In spite of everything Aziraphale has ever thought or said, Crowley is a big believer in playing it safe.

Aziraphale huffs. “I told you, I thought you knew. I was never hiding it – I was simply… not acknowledging it. I thought you were doing the same. An unspoken rule of our arrangement.”

“You said you _didn’t even like me_.”

That earns him a look that is downright (and unfairly) scornful. “Yes and I was lying, wasn’t I? Quite badly, too. You knew it. I knew it. I don’t see why you’re using _that_ as evidence.” There’s a pause and then he softens. “Crowley. I gave you _holy water_.”

“That was hardly-” he stops, the memory of that moment forcing its way up through its consciousness until he can see it before him like a film. He knew that had been hard for Aziraphale to do, one of the hardest things he had probably ever done, and something he’d been dead against from the first. But he’d done it anyway, for Crowley. It was something no one had ever done for Crowley and he’d told himself, _desperately_ told himself, not to read into it any further than his angel being kind. Because Aziraphale was just kind. It wasn’t a special act, it certainly wasn’t an act of love. It couldn't be.

It had been. It was. It is.

By heaven and hell and god and satan and everything and everyone in between, Crowley has been the _blindest_ creature on this planet.

“Oh,” he says.

Aziraphale smiles again. He comes nearer, until he can put his hands on either side of Crowley’s – very hot – face. “I’m sorry, my dear. I truly thought you knew.”

“Yeah and I _truly_ thought you were just the most oblivious person in the universe.”

He laughs. His thumb strokes his cheek and the gesture is so strangely, _achingly_ natural, as though they had been doing this for millennia, and Crowley gets the first real sense of how much Aziraphale has been holding back – how he wanted, just as much as Crowley did.

He isn’t sure who leans in – and in light of everything, that’s terribly fitting – but suddenly he is kissing Aziraphale and Aziraphale is kissing him and now this, this is what Crowley had imagined the moment being like. Maybe not the extending circumstances, set in between a failed apocalypse and the impending repercussions, but this feeling. The warmth, more glowing than any memory of heaven and sweeter than any sin. Incomparable to anything in this universe and any other. Aziraphale would probably call it ineffable he thinks, and actually laughs against the angel’s mouth, and feels - more than hears or sees - Aziraphale echo it. 

"So, to be perfectly, transparently clear with you," Aziraphale adds when at last, they part. "I love you very much."

Crowley grins, unnecessary heart beating wildly away in his chest. He says nothing, however, and a second or two passes before Aziraphale’s brow furrows ever so slightly.

His grin widens. “What? It’s not like you _need_ the confirmation, right?” He waits for his angel’s indignant expression – and gets it – and gives him a swift, joyful kiss. “You’re still absolutely ridiculous, but I love you, too.”

Aziraphale’s smile warms him as much as their kisses do, and again Crowley feels that thrill of something much like hope. Hope that there will be more smiles, and more kisses, and more them. There’s no telling what will happen to them in the morning, not for certain, but there’s a chance that they might finally have _time_. 


End file.
